Life Changes

One of the most vivid memories I have of my grandmother is the final salvo in her war against squirrels. An avid birdwatcher, she had for years sought the perfect way to feed birds without fattening the local squirrels. When standalone birdfeeders didn’t work she’d suspended them from fishing line strung some thirty feet between neighboring trees. She would periodically trap squirrels and release them miles away. “They’re like dogs,” she’d explained to me when they’d invariably resume the onslaught, “they know where home is.” Convinced she recognized several that had found their way back to the promised land, she had my grandfather drown one unlucky rodent in some kind of bizarre statement. Nothing worked.

One summer day I was playing in her backyard and heard a thump, turned and saw a squirrel in its death throes on the ground next to me. I had read about when it rained frogs in Pharaoh’s Egypt and ran for cover to the nearby porch. My grandmother was there holding what looked like an assault rifle with a small plume of smoke escaping the barrel. It was the last time she’d ever kill one; my grandfather – racked with guilt for his complicity in the squirrel drowning – intentionally misaligned the scope to save the squirrels of Billerica, Massachusetts.

Fast forward twenty-five years and I am sitting at her bedside in a hospice in south Atlanta. She is 87, has lungs riddled with pneumonia, and is 5 years into Alzheimer’s. She will die soon.

I am surprised to find her hair soft to the touch. They bathe her daily. While her skin is old and frail, her still feminine hands belie her condition. Her nails are painted and her fingers still wear the rings she’s worn for decades. It is as though the life is exiting slowly, from her body, from her lungs, from her face, until only her hands can contain it. She clasps them together on occasion and rests them on her stomach. It suggests her essence, dignified independence.

Periodically she wakes, picking at her clothing, coughing, and mumbling incoherently, sometimes managing to swallow a few ice chips before drifting away. There are moments of lucidity, but longer periods of vacant stares and labored breathing. According to the pamphlet on dying on her nightstand, she has one foot in this world and one foot in another. It makes sense.

I don’t have much experience with dying. I was surprised to learn they really don’t feed you much in hospice. The dying body doesn’t need food. They say she prefers the room quiet, so as not to distract her from the process. She is reconciling her life, filling in the blanks, and coming to terms. It is utterly human.

In a nearby room a baby is crying. The disparity between one life ending and another beginning is oddly comforting. It is good to be reminded of the cycle of things.